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bious otter, of which kind the white-faced otter is very rare.” 
Hardiman, in a note to his edition of this work (1846), says t 
“ When our author wrote (1684), and for some years afterwards, 
wolves were to be found in Iar Connaught, but not in such 
numbers as in the early part of that century. The last wolf 
which I have been able to trace here was killed in the moun- 
tains of Joyce country, in the year 1700. After the wars of 
1641 the ravages of the wolves were so great throughout Ire- 
land as to excite ..the attention of the State. 6 Wolf-hunters ’ 
were appointed in various districts, and amongst others in Iar 
Connaught, who helped to rid the country of these ferocious 
animals.”* * * § 
In an account of the British Islands, published at Nuremberg 
in 1690, the wilds of Kerry are referred to as harbouring wolves 
and foxes ; f and in the reign of William and Mary, Ireland was 
sometimes called by the nickname of “ Wolf-land.” Thus in 
a poem on the battle of La Hogue, 1692, called “ Advice to a 
Painter,” the terror of the Irish army is described : — 
A chilling damp, 
And wolf-land howl runs through the rising camp. 
“ Three places in Ireland are commemorated, each as having 
had the last Irish wolf killed there, namely, .one in the south, 
another near Grlenarm, and the third, Wolf-hill, three miles 
from Belfast.” £ The one in the south is probably that referred 
to in Edwards’s u Cork Bemembrancer ” (p. 131), wherein the 
following entry occurs : “ This year (1710) the last presentment 
[to the Grand Jury] for killing wolves was made in the county 
of Cork.” § In the old “ Statistical Account of Scotland,” how- 
ever, edited by Sir John Sinclair, it is stated (vol. xii., p. 447) 
that the last was killed in Ireland in 1709. 
The great woods of Shillela, on the confines of Carlow and 
Wicklow, now the property of Earl Fitzwilliam, are said to have 
held wolves until about the year 1700, when the last of them 
was destroyed in the neighbourhood of Grlendaloch.|| 
In a poem, in six cantos, published as late as 1719, and en- 
titled, 66 MacDermot, or the Irish Fortune-Hunter,” 66 wolf- 
hunting ” and “ wolf-spearing ” are represented as common 
sports in Munster. Here is an extract : — 
* Hardiman, op. cit., p. 10, note. 
t This work the writer has not seen. It is quoted by Macaulay, u Hist. 
Engl.,” vol. iii., p. 136. 
X Thompson, “ Nat. Hist. Ireland,” vol. iv., p. 34. 
§ See also Scouler, 1 Journ. Geol. Soc./ Dublin, vol. i., p. 226. 
|| Mackenzie’s Natural History, p. 20. This volume, published in London 
in modern times, is undated. 
